


home is where the heart is

by magnoliias



Category: Watcher Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24211663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnoliias/pseuds/magnoliias
Summary: Steve’s second ever life wake-up call comes in the form of two strangers and a knife.
Relationships: Steve/Stephanos
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	home is where the heart is

**Author's Note:**

> okay HIGHKEY i dont know what im doing. that is my first disclaimer. i also dont know how tags work so uhhhh ye
> 
> second, i know approximately nothing about getting stabbed OR the stuff that comes after getting stabbed
> 
> third, im gonna be posting trigger warnings in these beginning notes for y'all, because i dont want anything here to cause any (unintended) bad times
> 
> so yeah!!
> 
> **tw: drug mentions, stabbing, subsequent injury, medical settings**

Steve had never been fond of commitment.

If he was honest, he quite enjoyed the life he lived. Still young, travelling the country wired on coffee and energy drinks and food he really hoped he could afford. He never settled in one place too long, and if he did, he got antsy. More than a week, and he’d feel his body itching to be somewhere else,  _ anywhere _ else, playing some dimly-lit bar and praying his voice wouldn’t give out before his last song.

It was a weird contact high he’d get from shows. Brushing his teeth in dirty motel bathrooms, he’d wonder if it was secondhand smoke or the thrill of his craft. He liked to believe it was the latter, but God only knows what dangerous cocktail of chemicals found its way in his lungs at all these places. He’d gotten familiar with a select few of them in his early twenties.

He hummed through the toothpaste foam, a tune he couldn’t get out of his head. And he hummed it again washing his face, and again climbing into the bed. This was, in Steve’s humble opinion, the way life should be.

But he couldn’t convince himself it’d last. Of course it wouldn’t last. Nothing ever does.

- **+** -

Steve’s second ever life wake-up call comes in the form of two strangers and a knife.

He’d woken up late that day, sore muscles from a late night performance keeping him unconscious for a few hours longer than usual, so by the time he’d gotten ready enough to check out of his room the sun was high in the California sky. Temperatures hadn’t quite slipped out of their winter cools yet, so Steve welcomed the sunlight on his skin filtering through the windows.

Checkout was easier than he thought. The guy at the desk took his key, looked it over with a glazed expression on his face, and nodded at him. He nodded back, of course.

Steve left the motel with nothing on him but his phone, his wallet, and his chill. He’d stored everything he owned away in a unit in Sacramento, including his guitar after a terrifying encounter with some guys who wanted it bad enough to beat the shit out of him for it. He didn’t really mind; the venues always had some kind of guitar for him to use, and the lack of physical baggage made him feel free.

Halfway through the front door, Steve and his stupid, stupid ears picked up on a concerning noise. This wasn’t the best part of town, and Steve sure as hell didn’t want any trouble, but curiosity brought him to the source of the noise.

And… his heart sank into the pits of Earth’s inner core. The sun’s rays didn’t reach here, and neither did any divine rays of goodwill, because Steve just watched a man get stabbed.

For all it’s worth, Steve was pretty surprised. He couldn’t really get his feet to move, or his lungs to take in air, or his eyes to blink. In that classic useless bystander fashion, Steve watches this guy get stabbed a few times, shoved to the ground, and abandoned by the attacker.

Oh, the attacker. Right.

In seconds, this tall, thin figure had gone from actively stabbing a dude in an alley to vanishing completely without any sort of trace.

But Steve caught that flash of light in the attacker’s eyes as he glanced toward him, he could almost call it recognition, and in Steve’s memory the glance lasted much longer than it actually did. It was terrifying. If Steve had control over his body, he’d probably be pissing himself right now.

Instead of anything else, though, Steve endured a couple of silent heartbeats before rushing to the man slumped against the brick walls with new adrenaline.

“Holy shit, holy shit, you’re bleeding,” panic crackled through his voice, “I’m calling the police. Holy shit.”

The young man in front of him wasn’t moving much by any means, but the appreciative sigh wasn’t lost on Steve. The following wince when Steve attempted to put pressure on his wounds wasn’t lost either.

Steve’s trembling hands grabbed for the phone in his pockets, and with some difficulty dialled the emergency number, tapping the button to put the other line on speaker.

In the seconds it takes the 911 responder to start talking, Steve takes a look at who he’s trying to save. While his frenzied brain might not be completely clued into his surroundings, he might as well try and figure out who the fuck decided to get stabbed in broad daylight.

As it turns out, this guy is… not at all bad-looking. Well, at least in terms of attractive-ness. His face is soft and virtually clear of blemishes, he’s slim but not skinny, he’s got soft-looking, dyed-light hair that flops over his eyebrows in locks. Steve actually has to shake his head and clear his mind before he starts talking to the dispatcher.

“Uh, yeah, I’m in an alley off Shallowsea, my, uh, friend here got stabbed. He’s not looking great.” The dispatcher talks. “No, I didn’t… I didn’t see who did it, but he… well, that’s not important yet. I need an ambulance.” Steve wants to follow it up with a threat, but he supposes he’s in hot enough water as it is.

The softest, littlest groan from the guy on the ground catches Steve’s attention, and he practically hisses the word “Hurry!” into the phone.

Steve prays the hand on this guy’s stomach is doing something helpful. Putting pressure on the wound and staunching blood flow or whatever.

Before long, flashing lights and deafening sirens swallow him and his… friend? acquaintance? from both sides. There are policemen, crowds of them, and emergency medical people too, both of whom he’d seen too many times to be comfortable.

They haul the poor guy into the ambulance and look expectantly at Steve, who is at this point doubting the fabric of reality. His brain’s everywhere and nowhere at once, and so he steps into the back of the ambulance with the guy and the paramedics and lets himself realize he won’t be the same after this.

It might be the shock, or the loud sirens blaring to dissipate traffic, or the questions from the paramedics Steve couldn’t answer, but he’s feeling awfully dizzy.

“What’s his name? You said he was your friend on the phone.”

Steve blinks dumbly. He really did say that, huh. “Uh… I don’t… I don’t know his name, I just…”

The paramedic, a  _ very  _ tall woman with piercing eyes and a sharp face, glares daggers (ha) at him.

“You just… okay, well, thanks for at least calling 911,” she sighs, exasperated, and he could definitely tell she wanted to go a different direction with that sentence. He’s just fine with the one that he heard, though, and he looks up to meet her eyes.

“I… I mean, I watched him get stabbed, I can’t just… leave a guy. Have that on my conscience for the rest of my life.” He gestures toward the man. He looks weirdly peaceful, like he is asleep and not fighting severe blood loss.

The paramedic blinks slowly at him, then cracks the faintest hint of a smile. “That’s fair. Maybe noble. We’ll see in the coming days.” Her hand comes up to brush her hair back toward her ponytail and she gestures pointedly toward the pile of paperwork she’s holding.

“Th- the coming days? Wh-”

“You thought you were gonna walk out unscathed after all this? We’ve still got lots of legal stuff to go through, and that includes insurance, police questioning, and a whole bunch of things for court-”

“ _ Police questioning? _ ”

The lady quirks an eyebrow. “Mmmhm. You saw an attacker, the police will want to know everything. That’s all.” Her tone suggests that it definitely is not as simple as her words describe.

Steve’s a mess at this point. His usual cool, lone-wolf aura has gone right out the window of this ambulance and, in its place, a regular guy with a new stain on his record. Of course, Steve wasn’t without stains on his record, but those were all… kind of… his fault.

His stomach twists.

“Well, sir, since you don’t know anything about your  _ friend _ here, I might as well ask you about yourself. I’m going to need your full name and birth date.”

His stomach twists again, but this time it feels like he’s going to pass out.

“Uh, Steve Matthew Davis. March 27th, 1992.” He thinks for a brief moment that if this lady makes a joke about him having three first names he’s going to lose his fucking mind.

She says nothing, hurriedly writing. She seems used to the jostling ambulance; her hands are somehow steady despite the tossing and turning, and even though Steve finds his legs tensing every so often to keep him upright, she’s acting like they’re on solid ground.

“Where were you born, Steve?” Her voice is a cross between bored and condescending that makes Steve want to punch her and dive out the back doors at the same time.

Steve holds back the urge to say  _ Wouldn’t you like to know, you tall motherfucker,  _ and instead grits out a “Sacramento.”

“California?” She stares at him from where she stands. He starts sweating, but he can’t quite tell whether he’s angry or afraid.

“Yeah, d-” Steve swallows the second word before it can escape, and the lady’s short laugh tells him she could infer what it was. She goes back to looking at the papers, and after a minute of shuffling them around, she looks to Steve.

“Okay, that’s all I need for now. Hang in there while I do things,” and she goes to speak to the paramedic handling the wounded man. They speak in hushed tones, and the other paramedic glances over to Steve once, but he could tell he wasn’t looking too conversational by the way the dude immediately looks away.

The man in the stretcher still looks fine. The beepy thing is beeping slow but regular, and no one seems to be in panic mode yet. Steve catches himself staring at his face, his hair, his eyes. His own face burns with the realization that this might be weird.

The ambulance comes to a halt and, instantly, everything changes. The forced calm of the ambulance cabin is interrupted by doors flying open, and a ramp, and the guy’s stretcher being wheeled quickly away. The emergency staff people fly into action, and the woman takes his wrist and leads him out of the vehicle. Her hand is firm around his arm, like she’s had to do this a million times, and the height difference between himself and her is ten times worse when they’re next to each other.

“Okay, so, he’s stable, which is good for all of us. But the police are gonna come and talk to you shortly, and I don’t know when you’ll be able to come and see him. Depending on the damage, it might be a few hours or a few days. I’ll be in contact.” Then, as if she’d remembered something, she shuffles around in her back pocket and fishes out a small card.

It looks like a shitty homemade business card. The lady’s name, her phone number, the number of the guy’s hospital room and the number of the front desk are scrawled in a looping, yet compressed script. Steve stares at it for a moment. Her name is Qezza Little, a terrible coincidence, as she stands more than a foot taller than him.

She’s gone before he finishes reading, and when he looks up, all he sees is a police car slowing to a stop nearby. He doesn’t move; he’s always been wary of cops.

“Steve, correct?” The cop approaches him. He’s not at all intimidating, but Steve flinches at the mention of his name nonetheless, and stretches his arm out to shake the officer’s hand.

It’s a sweaty and uncomfortable handshake, but once everything’s said and done, Steve is sitting in a police car talking about shit that happened barely half an hour ago. He’s trying to be chill about it, and he’s trying to say everything now so he can just  _ go _ , and he supposes that bleeds through into his tone because the cop stops asking questions for a minute.

“He’s gonna be fine, man. I need you to focus on this, yeah? We’re making good progress.” Steve doesn’t look at him, but he makes an affirmative noise, and the cop is back to asking.

- **+** -

Hours later, Steve is sitting on the curb outside of the hospital. Dusk inches ever closer, and when the streetlights flicker on, he figures it’s time to go.

...Go where?

The train of thought he’d been entertaining about music, supplied by the dull blur of his Twitter feed and the consistent threat of ants crawling on his jeans, came to a screeching halt. He was still waiting on a confirmation from the next venue, and all his shit was in storage, and he’d already checked out of the motel. He tries to think up some kind of plan, but it does appear that Steve has nowhere to be, nowhere to go, and most importantly, nowhere to call home.

He laughs softly, running his hand through his short dark hair. He’d always known it’d come to this. In nightmares it was always different and dangerous; he’d get addicted to coke or something and die, or he’d get in some sort of car crash, or he’d get robbed within an inch of his life and kicked to the street. All of them were, in his mind, at least somewhat probable.

But this? Seeing a guy get stabbed in an alley and going to help him and, god forbid, getting attached? Steve almost wished he had walked away.

Brain on autopilot, Steve pushes himself up from the curb and walks right into the front door of the hospital. The girl at the front desk looks at him with blank, yet knowing eyes.

“I’d like to see my friend in room 13W.”

**Author's Note:**

> oh also!! my name is sunny and u can find me on twitter @watcherlite if u have anything u wanna say!! pls be nice i dont write a lot and um. yes


End file.
